There are so many things to criticize in my own backyard that I don’t often like to criticize things outside of my backyard. However, in the case of this story, I am willing to criticize somebody outside of my country.

I don’t think many Saudi Arabians feel comfortable criticizing their own country, unless they live abroad. One of the reasons for this is the so-called religious police.

You may recall the Saudi religious police from this infamous story. Basically, there was this burning school with a bunch of schoolgirls inside. They could have easily left the building. The firemen could easily have entered the building and saved them. The religious police prevented both of these things from happening and, thus, the girls burned to death.

Why weren’t they allowed out? Well, they were not wearing proper Muslim clothing at the time.

According to that most recent link:

The religious police are widely feared in Saudi Arabia. They roam the streets enforcing dress codes and sex segregation, and ensuring prayers are performed on time.

Those who refuse to obey their orders are often beaten and sometimes put in jail.

Let this be a warning to anyone who wants to mix religion and government a little too closely.

Anyhow, back to the original link, Muhammad Al-Harbi is this high school teacher in Saudi Arabia who spoke out against terrorism. In doing so, he upset some Islamic studies teachers at the school who urged some students to launch a lawsuit against him. The final outcome of this was that Al-Harbi was sentenced to three years in jail and 50 lashes a week for 15 weeks. When he was tried, the only people the judge let testify were the accusers. There’s more to the story than this, but you can read it at the original link or here. It just gets worse the more you read.

You know, most of the 9/11 bombers were from Saudi Arabia. Bin Laden? Saudi Arabian. Among the most oppressive regimes in the world? Saudi Arabia.

I should also remind you that we in the U.S. support them almost unconditionally because they, you know, have oil and stuff. Sure, we hate human rights violations and oppressive regimes when they are in countries that don’t like us… well, I mean, sure, Saudi Arabia doesn’t like us… I mean, their people flew planes into the WTC and Pentagon…

It is stuff like this what makes a body question the U.S. Government when they talk about invading Iraq to protect U.S. citizens and to bring democracy to the Middle East. If it is so important, why don’t we try to, you know, encourage Saudi Arabia to ask its citizens not to blow us up and to treat women better and stuff?